People & Places: November 2019
People & Places is published monthly during the academic year by the Office of College Relations. It reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievement.
Amelia B. Finaret, assistant professor of global health studies, published “Beyond Calories: The New Economics of Nutrition” in the Annual Review of Resource Economics. The article defines the emerging field of nutrition economics through a literature review of studies which analyze the economics of dietary patterns around the world.
Emeritus Professor of History Barry Shapiro has published two articles in the Fall 2019 issue of Clio’s Psyche: “Searching for the French Revolution, Mandela, and Beyond,” an autobiographical account of the author’s engagement with psychohistory, and “Trauma and Blame in the Israel-Palestine Conflict,” an analysis of the counter-productive potential of moralistic views of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. He has also published “Is Holding Israel to a ‘Higher Standard’ Anti-Semitic?” in the October 2019 edition of Israel Horizons, the online magazine of Partners for Progressive Israel.
Diane D’Amico, emeritus professor of English, has had her essay titled “Christina Rossetti and the Seaside: A Place of Hope and Remembrance” accepted for publication. It will appear in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, volume 28 (Fall 2019). In quest of improved health and holiday pleasure, Rossetti often visited the seaside. This essay explores those many seaside sojourns and their influence upon her poetry as the sights and sounds of the sea blended with her religious beliefs.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies Matthew Mitchell‘s article, “Borrowing from the Buddha: Buddhist Temples as Financial Centers in Premodern East Asia” was published in the Fall 2019 volume of the peer-reviewed journal Education About Asia. Mitchell’s article, which is in the special issue focused on Entrepreneurship in Asia, discusses the ways that Buddhist temples in China and Japan offered loans of cash or seeds to locals, thereby enabling the spread of Buddhism and the economic development of communities near temples.
Visiting Assistant Professor of French Jan Starczewski presented at the International Colloquium in Paris, France, on “Diderot, la religion, le religieux” October 3-4, 2019. Starczewski’s communication was “Échos bibliques et sécularisation d’éléments judéo-chrétiens dans Le Neveu de Rameau de Diderot” (Biblical Echoes and Secularization of Judeo-Christian Elements in Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot) based on a chapter of his dissertation.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Geology Matt Carter published an article entitled “The statistical eigenvector analysis technique (SEAT) for dip data analysis” in the Journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology with colleagues from Eriksfiord, Inc.
Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Alexis Hart‘s chapter “Changing Technologies and Writing from and about War,” co-authored with former Allegheny visiting professor of journalism Cheryl Hatch, appears in the edited collection Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare from University of Pittsburgh Press. In September, Hart served as a faculty mentor at the Naylor Workshop on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies held at York College of Pennsylvania, and in October, she was part of a roundtable titled “A Canvas of Opportunity: Painting a Picture of Research in Small Liberal Arts College (SLAC) Writing Centers” at the International Writing Centers Association conference held in Columbus, Ohio.
Assistant Professor of Geology Katie Tamulonis published an article titled “A Methodology for Integrating Unconventional Geologic and Engineering Data into a Geocellular Model” in the geology journal Interpretation. Tamulonis was also invited to present this research at the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences 2019 annual conference held in State College, Pennsylvania.
Aline Lo, assistant professor of English, participated in two roundtables at the Hmong Studies Consortium International Conference. She was invited to discuss the role of motherhood in Hmong American poetry as well as the negative and lasting impact of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
Assistant Professor of English John MacNeill Miller presented a paper at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference in Columbus, Ohio. The paper, “Weird Beyond Description: Weird Fiction and the Suspicion of Scenery,” examined the unconventional treatment of scenery in weird fiction with special attention to the significance of these fictions for narratology and for the environmental humanities.
Lauren Fugate ’20 presented a poster entitled “Overlooked Orientalism: Images of the East in Michael Field’s Whym Chow: Flame of Love” at the annual conference of the North American Victorian Studies Association in Columbus, Ohio. The poster detailed her research into the political significance of Chow dogs in the early twentieth century, a time when British and American animal lovers—including the poets collectively known as “Michael Field”—valued the Chow Chow breed primarily for its association with exoticized stereotypes about Asian cultures.